Seth Green’s Stolen ‘Bored Ape’ NFT Saga Ends Without Case Law

The actor Seth Green has reportedly paid a ransom for the return of his purloined NFT, and that's disappointing some intellectual property attorneys.

For those not in the know: Green, who played Dr. Evil's son in the Austin Powers franchise, was planning to develop a TV show around an NFT he had purchased. But then a hacker stole the digital token from him. This raised all sorts of novel legal issues around whether Green still had the rights to exploit the IP.

Riddhi Setty, an IP reporter with Bloomberg Law, says a lot of attorneys were hoping Green would go to court and get a ruling from a judge about whether he still owned the stolen token's IP. This could have cleared up some unanswered intellectual property questions around digital assets.

For this episode of our weekly legal news podcast, On The Merits, Setty explains to us why Green was in this situation in the first place, and why Green's decision not to go to court only delays the legal reckoning for NFTs and intellectual property.

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